Rodolfo Usigli wrote El gesticulador in 1938. César Rubio, an unemployed professor, has the same name as a missing hero of the Revolution. A professor from Harvard mistakes him for the hero, and Rubio plays along.
The National Institute of Fine Arts dates the premiere to 1947, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The chronology of the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes also records an earlier staging in Chihuahua, on December 1, 1944.